Lou Piniella Accomplishes Little for a Floundering Franchise

CHICAGO - And there goes another one. Another year, another manager, another era. And the Cubs are still losers.

Lou Piniella announced Tuesday that he was quitting as Cubs manager at the end of the year, but the truth is, the Cubs had already beaten the life out of him nearly two years ago.

Piniella arrived known for his fire and passion. He hobbles off looking like a battered old man, Cubbed to death.

It was thrilling in Chicago when he arrived four years ago, an outsider who didn't know about being a Cubbie, which I consider a swear word. He didn't know there was a land where people found something cute and cuddly in generations of losing.

Old ladies and church groups took buses to Wrigley Field from the suburbs, from Iowa. People came to sit in the sun, watch the Cubs and convince themselves they had hope.

Piniella would crack the whip. They were finally spending money on free agents, too. Piniella was the final piece.

Well, goodbye, Lou. You failed.

"It has nothing to do with the way this season's gone,'' he said, explaining why he's leaving. "What it has to do with more than anything is my age factor and the fact that I want to go home.''

The Cubs can do that to you. A fiery manager reduced to wanting to go home to his grandkids.

The charm is gone from the Cubs now. Piniella took them from lovable to laughable to pathetic.Meanwhile, I sit here in Wrigley Field watching the Cubs, who sit roughly 10 games under .500. They are playing lowly Houston in front of lots of empty seats.

The charm is gone from the Cubs now. Piniella took them from lovable to laughable to pathetic.

He was an excellent player and did great things in nearly a quarter of a century as a manager, including winning a World Series. That doesn't change. His legacy is safe.

Just not here. Maybe Piniella was hired to win the unwinnable World Series, the Cubs' World Series. Maybe nobody can do this.

General manager Jim Hendry, who is tied to Piniella for this era, said his manager, "took us to a spot where, once and for all, the bar was raised for good.''

Huh? What did you mean by that, Jim? "Well, the fans boo when we lose,'' he said. "They didn't do that before.''

He's talking about expectations. Cubs fans have them now. Actually, that started a little earlier, after Dusty Baker's Cubs fell apart a few outs from the World Series, blaming a fan for trying to catch a foul ball. The team committed every imaginable mistake after that, but neatly blamed everything on the fan. Poor Steve Bartman.

Before that, fans had blamed a Greek curse, after a tavern owner was kicked out of the 1945 World Series at Wrigley because he had brought in a smelly goat. He cursed the Cubs.

How cute! Anyway, Bartman was an excuse for some, but the start of anger for others.

A guy nearly hit me with a bag of peanuts aimed for Bartman that night.

Ah, the memories. By the way, as I wrote that, Cubs pitcher Ryan Dempster walked in two runs. Anyway, it is true that fans didn't used to boo, and now they do. So let that be Piniella's legacy with the Cubs:He got Cubs fans to boo. I have to admit, that is an improvement.

Hendry gushed Tuesday about Piniella playing young players, and new owner Tom Ricketts babbled about him being a great manager.

I was able to hold my lunch down long enough to ask Ricketts: as a Cubs fan, can you see any era that doesn't include a World Series as a successful one?

"I can't envision an era without that and still call it a success,'' he said. "No."

No.

I am looking around this antique ballpark and a lifetime is going by. Several lifetimes. This is still a beautiful old park, though it has been modernized some. Down the first-base line, I see roughly the seats my father and I sat in when he took me to my first game as a 5-year old in the rain against the Pirates.The bleachers are far bigger now, and not filled with sarcastic Bleacher Bums. Instead, it's a big frat party. The frat boys pushed out the loyal when they started playing night games here and jacking up prices. The team, becoming big-time, even started a ticket-scalping scam against its own fans.

The team was trying to win, and the fun was here. Now, it's not.

And Piniella wants to go home.

It has been 102 years since the Cubs won the World Series. My grandfather was a fetus at the time. The next generation recalls Leo Durocher coming in the same way Piniella did, as a tough outsider not willing to put up with losing.

See how the stepladder through time works?

Before Durocher, the Cubs tried to go without a manager, using a group of rotating coaches called the College of Coaches. Then Durocher came in to kick butt. He left in shame, holding the door for Piniella.

Really, Piniella, who's about to turn 67, had a two-year run here. In 2007, the Cubs started slow, and some players were upset with the way he changed the lineup every day. Piniella was working a miracle, furiously figuring out who to dump and which Band-Aid to keep. When pitcher Carlos Zambrano punched catcher Michael Barrett, the team was falling apart. And it had no faith in a manager it thought was living on his name. Piniella threw one of his famous tantrums at an umpire. It was fake and embarrassing. But it told the players he was there for them.

Amazingly, that worked. The team got hot, and went on to win the division.

They won the division. Then Piniella inexplicably took Zambrano out after the sixth inning of Game 1 in the playoffs. They lost. They were swept. Fans booed, and Piniella didn't understand why.

The next year, the Cubs won 97 games, and panicked in the first round.

An entire team choked. That was all for Piniella.

The Red Sox won. The White Sox. Even the Chicago Blackhawks won the Stanley Cup. Unwinnable championships are won everywhere.

Meanwhile, Alfonso Soriano, the most overpaid player of all, still can't take a pitch. Zambrano is still fighting players. And the only thing left for Piniella is to hold the door for the next guy.